All in all, a visual and musical feast.

As one of Booker's supporters notes, it's a sad day when academic success is used to denigrate an African-American.

All in all, a harrowing, one-of-a-kind movie.

It seems to me that too often in this country, and especially now, science has become politicized to the detriment of those who could be helped by it. Just because truths are inconvenient is no reason to suppose they are not real.

Probably the most faithful to the writer's tortured spirit. It's the kind of movie that gets under your skin - and stays there.

Kenan never loses sight of the wonderment that children (and adults) experience when the inanimate becomes animate. Anthropomorphism is basic to the art of animation. So is a good story, and Kenan has that, too.

Factotum is so sly and low-key hilarious that anybody can be in on the joke.

In Gyllenhaal's all-out performance, it reminded me most of Judy Davis in "High Tide," another movie directed by a woman (Gillian Armstrong) about a misfit mother and her daughter. It has the same fierce honesty.

Nathalie Baye is remarkable in Le Petit Lieutenant where she plays Caroline Vaudieu, a Parisian police inspector who returns to her post after a bout with alcoholism following her child's death.

DiCaprio's performance is a revelation only for those who have underestimated him. In Scorsese's previous films, "The Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator," he seemed callow and miscast, but here he has the presence of a full-bodied adult. He's grown into his emotions.

The film may be subtitled "Shut Up & Sing," but you can't sing with your mouth closed.

Viewers expecting a blistering attack on the fast-food business, or an Altmanesque panorama, will be disappointed, but it's a sensitive and humane piece of work.

It's a sideways view of a national trauma. The large cast includes standout performances from such unlikelies as Demi Moore, playing an alcoholic crooner, and Estevez himself, as her long-suffering husband. Everyone in this film is powerful.

If the literacy of The History Boys is deemed uncinematic, then give me uncinema anytime.

Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima is his companion piece to "Flags of Our Fathers" and in almost every way is superior.

It's a marvelous performance in a marvelous movie, one that sneaks up on you while you're watching it.

The rap music we hear, which is produced outside Cuba's state-run music industry, is politically audacious and charged with personal expression and uplift. The film was produced by Charlize Theron's socially conscious company, Denver and Delilah films.

It appears to have been made from the inside, not only of the characters but of the historical situation in which they struggle.

In Zodiac, working from a script by James Vanderbilt, Fincher has decidedly toned down his act. His straight-ahead, methodical direction isn't as flagrantly unsettling as much of his previous work, but it's more psychologically layered. In this film, for the first time, we feel for his characters when they bleed.

In some ways the movie's straightforward style is more appropriate to the horror than a more souped-up approach would have been. With material this strong, sometimes the best thing a filmmaker can do is to stay out of the way.

A cross between "Godzilla" and "Jaws," it manages to be both truly scary and truly funny – sometimes all at once.

The Namesake takes in a lot of territory, and at times is too diffuse, too attenuated. But the actors are so expressive that they provide their own continuity. They transport us to a realm of pure feeling.

The interaction between soldiers and captives becomes a microcosm for an entire culture. It's a wisp of a movie but it has stayed with me longer than much supposedly weightier fare.

In addition to the marvelous lead cast, all sorts of funny performers show up in cameo roles, including Steve Coogan, Bill Nighy, and Timothy Dalton.

The plot's many complications pretty much all add up, which is a rarity these days for a murder mystery. It's possible that audiences don't even care anymore if a film makes sense as long it's entertaining.

The film is laced with lovely moments, from the leads and from Shelly as a waitress friend.

Tim Robbins gives a strong performance in this first-class horror yarn, which has a surprisingly strong political edge.

The most enjoyable thing about the "Ocean's" movies is that nobody involved seems to take them seriously. The star wattage is immense but the stars themselves are refreshingly self-deprecating, almost satirically so.

Dan Klores's astonishing film is about a subject so bizarre it could only work as a documentary – as a drama, it would be dismissed as being too far-fetched.

This movie doesn't end up taking on all the problems it offers up. Meting out justice to an evil school administrator seems to be enough for now. As an enlightened and energetic film - a voice for the '90s - it is enough. [12 Sep 1990, p.11]

Easily the best in the series since the first one.

The movie is best when it just riffs on our compacted memories of the past 18 years of episodes. Fortunately, that's most of the time.

Considerably less slick than "An Inconvenient Truth," and no less urgent.

After seeing this film, try reading Norman Mailer's "Of A Fire on the Moon," its perfect companion piece.

Smart and charming.

The movie is an idyllic view of life as it ought to be, rather than the way it is.

In a film that overwhelmingly avoids happy-faced pronouncements, this one sticks out.

At its best, Juno is about the messy things in life that are not so easily summarized.

Sprawling yet cramped, There Will Be Blood may not be the best movie of the year, but it's certainly the strangest. It evokes passing comparisons to everything from "Giant" to "Citizen Kane" but it's impossible to pigeonhole.

Director Mark Waters does a fine job meshing the fantastical with the quotidian.

I don't wish to give offense here, but it certainly doesn't hurt that Mary Lou is voiced by that famously small bundle of energy Isla Fisher. (She's 5-foot-2.)

At this late date there is little that is factually revelatory about his film, but as a human document of what people are capable of in wartime, it's indispensable.

The story line for WALL-E is probably too convoluted for small kids, and sometimes it suffers from techie overload, but it's more heartfelt than anything on the screens these days featuring humans.

This comic-book movie is more disturbing, and has more freakish power, than anything else I've seen all year.

Mongol is a throwback to a more respectable tradition. The largeness of its scope arises naturally from the material, not the budget. The movie earns its stature.

Preteen girls – and not just those who are already American Girl fanatics – should be entranced. And why not? Not many movies for that audience are as respectful as is this one.

As an anatomy not only of Polanski's psyche but also of the legal system he confronted, it's as baroquely compelling as "The Dark Knight."

Petit, by the way, is still very much alive and spry. I saw him at a screening of the film at the Sundance Film Festival where he spoke to the audience afterwards. On his way up to the podium, he tripped.

This is the loopiest star vehicle in ages.

In Moving Midway, Cheshire chronicles not only the history of the move but also of the family members, past and present, who occupied the place, and, most pointedly, the slaves who worked its fields, some of whom turn out to be related.

At just over two hours, Stranded is nonstop harrowing. It has cumulative power.

If this were a fictional Hollywood movie, it would be criticized for being too upbeat. But sometimes truth is not only stranger than fiction, it's also a whole lot better.

A young adult romantic comedy with a sweetness and delicacy that lifts it out of its genre.

Renner gives a full-bore performance of great individuality and industriousness, but essentially his character is as glamorized as any classic Westerner.

Despite everything, many of us still think of animation as a kid's genre. $9.99, based on stories by Etgar Keret who also co-wrote the script with the director, is an attempt to use the animation medium to express an entirely adult sensibility.

Judging from this film, a pop cultural resurgence in Afghanistan seems ultimately unstoppable, even with a resurgent Taliban, if for no other reason than that 60 percent of the population is under 21. Also, this is a country, as we see again and again, that loves to sing.

It leaves us with a question that may be unanswerable: How does one extinguish terrorism when its causes are myriad?

This is a movie about, among other things, pain, and it's made by someone who understands its expression.

Bracingly perceptive about the human comedy.

Heartbreaking, exhilarating, baffling. In other words, it expresses the performer's persona in its purest form.

The marvel of Cage's performance is that, somehow, it's all of a piece. That's the marvel of the movie, too. This is one fever dream you'll remember whole.

The Last Station isn’t all that it should be, but whenever these two actors are onscreen, it’s like a great night at the theater.

Bridges draws us deeply inside Blake’s moment-to-moment heartbreaks. He makes us root for him as we would root for a dear friend. Ultimately, his triumphs become our own.

The viciously anti-Semitic 1940 German movie “Jew Süss” is one of the most notorious films ever made...Today it is one of the few Nazi-era films that still cannot legally be shown.

The key to the film’s effectiveness is the casting of Rapace, who, while not mapping quite exactly to the book’s physical descriptions, is riveting.

Like all good noirs, it has an almost comic appreciation for how the best-laid plans can go horribly wrong. No matter how bad things get, they can always get worse. I watched the film in a state of rapt enjoyment.

Whatever it is, Exit Through the Gift Shop is an original.

The Japanese love affair with insects takes many forms, but most of them are, by Western standards, exotic. To Oreck's credit, she doesn't attempt to play down the exoticism by pretending to go native.

Because the war in Afghanistan is so much in the news now – it should always have been so – a movie like Restrepo is both a bracing document and, in a larger sense, a disappointment.

It's an inescapable fact that Gould's singular musical insights – the way he brought out in Bach a mesmeric unity of sound – could only have arisen from a singular personality.

This movie is a one-of-a-kind experience – blarney carried to rhapsodic heights.

With scrupulous fairness, Ferguson meticulously lays out for us the whole sordid mess.

He is the least intrusive of great directors, and Boxing Gym, which is about a gym in Austin, Texas, is so offhandedly observant that, for a while, you may wonder if much of anything is really going on.

Lena Dunham, the writer-director-star of the microbudget Tiny Furniture, has a distinctive comedic take on the world – a kind of haggard spiritedness.

On its own conventional terms, the film succeeds – maybe not as a "Coen Brothers" movie, but as a tall tale well told.

It's a deliciously perverse melodrama.

The best of Rango is a lot like the best of the first "Pirates" movie – crazily funny and rambunctious.

The riders who appear in Buck seem almost uniformly exalted by their contact with Brannaman and his methods.

Begins frighteningly and gets progressively more so.

In the end, the power poetry workshops, as the teachers are first to admit, are not about creating Shakespeares. They are about survival.

Pianomania is the thoroughly apt title for a thoroughly enjoyable documentary.

The action is swift and witty, and the 3-D effects are imaginative and not simply tacked on as with so many animated movies these days.

It gives ample play to all sides of the argument. Herzog allows us to think things through on our own.

A very good thrill ride and Cruise is better than he's been in a long time.

Despite never having made a movie before, and utilizing comparatively primitive camera and recording equipment, Kurt and his son Ian crafted a movie unlike any other in the rock-doc genre.

The sometimes agonizingly powerful documentary Under Fire: Journalists in Combat is built around some staggering statistics: Only two journalists were killed in World War I. Sixty-three lost their lives in World War II. And in the past two decades, almost one journalist per week has been killed.

A fine example of a director bringing just enough of his style to revitalize possibly dated material.

Extraordinary stunt and fight work and nonstop excitement, but a warning to those who are at all squeamish: this may be the most violent movie I've ever seen.

The mystery of the dual plot line is also a trick – a very cleverly executed one, which baffles the audience by exploiting their ingrained responses to certain cinematic conventions. I didn't figure it out until moments before the big reveal.

The innocence of the townspeople is weirdly uplifting. They love their Bernie so much that they seem even more blinkered than he is.

I've become weary of documentaries about winning prizes, but this one is special because the kids are.

The result is doubly satisfying: We get not only a trenchant political drama but a bang-up concert film as well.

It's a sweet and disquieting excursion made by filmmakers whose eyes and ears and imaginations are in marvelous sync.

A feast for Neil Young lovers and initiates alike.

It's really about the ways in which Chinese westernization clashes with the traditionalism of Confucian teachings. It's about competition versus piety.

In Michael Winterbottom's Trishna, Thomas Hardy's Victorian romantic tragedy "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" proves surprisingly adaptable to contemporary India.

Above all, literally, are the kites. When a character says, "You fly these kites and feel the joy," we know just what he means.

This may sound like a dry subject, but, as presented here, it's anything but – especially if you have more than a passing interest in the art and science of what gets projected onto our movie screens these days.

Her film is closer to Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" in the way it gets inside the gumption and desperation of childhood lived on the edge. It's a terrific, bracingly sad movie.

He's 9Mendes) discovered his stride here, a blend of thrills and sabotage and deep-dish emotionalism. The powerful performances by Craig and Dench surely owe a great deal to his indulgences.

What we do see, among much else that is damning, are archival NYPD videotapes of the boys being interrogated by detectives who press them to implicate one another in exchange for a leniency that never materialized.

What gives the series its force is not just its universality but also its particularity. These grown-ups may be Everyman, but they are also singular.

The pessimism pervading this film is summed up by Shalom, who says, speaking of the decades of occupation: "The future is very dark."

Back to the Future doesn't exactly leap out of the starting gate, and some scenes are strung out by gimmicky editing. But the story picks up steam as it goes along, and the last third is especially full of speedy surprises. [3 July 1985, p.23]

The ferocity of the performances is inextricable from the men’s real-life criminality. We are baffled, moved, and repulsed – often at the same time – by the elemental spectacle before us. In this metaprison drama, the prison bars are both illusory and unbreakable. Caesar Must Die chronicles an exalted entrapment.

Leon has a marvelous and rare eye for blending staged dramatic sequences into documentary settings, from barrio bodegas to high-rise penthouses. He often films in extended, unbroken takes, and this gives the actors a chance to work up their own distinctive rhythms.

The results are far more exciting than most Hollywood espionage thrillers.

The movie is artful to a fault, with too many characters sitting in perfectly arranged, immaculately lighted rooms and talking a lot. It contains near-classic sequences, though, and splendid performances. [28 Sept 1990]

The story is slender, but the Brazilian settings are exquisite and lilting tunes by Antonio Carlos Jobim cast a spell over the entire enterprise.

Leaves out portions of John Irving's novel that would have given it more balance and perspective, but the acting by Maguire and Caine is first-rate by any standard.

Splendid acting helps Jordan achieve most of his goals, although some may find the romantic and religious elements an uneasy mixture.

A powerful ending lends a strong emotional charge to this prettily filmed drama, but too much of the story is taken up with romantic clichés about the everyday challenges of childhood.

Has a mixture of strengths and limitations often found in historical epics: lots of eye-filling action and spectacle, little in the way of psychology or human interest.

Many belly laughs.

Some will find the movie's sexual antics too explicit and unconventional for comfort.

The plot is lively and the dialogue packs many good laughs.

The picture has fine ensemble acting and superb Italian scenery. It would have more power if it were shorter and tighter.

As the uptight banker, Robbins does some of his subtlest acting to date. As his hardened but resilient friend, Freeman is simply miraculous, giving the role so much depth, dignity, and good humor that you feel that you've known this man forever. [27 Sept 1994]

The film should captivate anyone with a taste for bold cinematics, unpredictable storytelling, and pitch-black humor aimed at the worthiest of targets: a self-involved and self-congratulatory, industry that often gives lip service to art while worshipping the bottom line. [10 Apr 1992]

Most of the acting is as real and warm as the characters themselves. And the streets, shops, and living rooms of Brooklyn have never seemed more inviting. [29 Jan 1988]

True, traces of his bad habits show through at certain moments, especially near the end, when a long and lachrymose scene plunges into Spielgerian sentimentality of the gooiest kind. But before that unfortunate point, Schinder's List serves up three full hours of brilliant storytelling. That's as humane and compassionate as it is gripping and provocative. [15 Dec 1993]

A thriller so tricky that figuring it out is half the fun.

Bird isn't an easy film, and it doesn't always make an effort to be likable. But it's a dazzler - at least as good as "Round Midnight,'' and that's saying a lot.

To say it right out, The Bostonians is the best movie I've seen all year.

Controversy and all, JFK is one of the year's most powerful and provocative films.

It ranks high on the Cronenberg scale as one of his more disturbing forays into depravity.

A solid achievement, but those in the press who have been trumpeting its greatness may be going in for a bit of self-congratulation. The movie plays very well to the choir.

No great claims should be made for In Her Shoes. If the aim here was to show how chick lit can become just plain lit, the effort failed. But there is something to be said for froth when it's expertly whipped.

Black, who wrote "Lethal Weapon," makes his directorial debut, and he puts a fresh spin not only on that film but also on a whole slew of films noirs.

The film is better than the recent "The War Within," which tried for the same things, but ultimately, and perhaps unavoidably, we are left face to face with the unknowable.

Pound for pound, Ami is a heavyweight.

Plowright's performance as a genteel widow in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is a small-scale gem, deeply felt without being in the least bit showy.

The scenes between Kong and Ann are much more than a goof: They're the soul of the movie.

Rhys-Meyers and Johansson work well together - they both know how to project glossiness and guile.

This film would be better if it wasn't so slick. Still, parts of it are enjoyably shaggy, and Hopkins is very endearing.

This is the most Hitchcockian of Haneke's films. A seemingly well-adjusted man in a well ordered universe is brought to the brink.

It's a classic example of how a movie can be great without, strictly speaking, being good. But when something is this funny, who wants to speak strictly?

Soderbergh does overemphasize the "little-people" dreariness of it all. But there is much low-key humor here, too, albeit on the dark side.

What actors! The great Miriam Margolyes has a wonderful cameo as a scullery maid, and Colin Firth manfully endures a face full of frosting. And then there's Angela Lansbury, playing her first movie role in 20 years as the villainous Aunt Adelaide.

Rothemund's use of the recorded testimony, while it gives his film a startling veracity, also limits his imagination. It prevents him from delving too deeply into the psychology of these activists.

Rapp has clearly been influenced by such lyrically disaffected '70s movies as "Five Easy Pieces." He brings out in Deschanel a sense of yearning, an avidity, that hits home.

While I don't entirely rule out the possibility that Bruce is a hoaxster, it seems more likely that his story is one of those weird scientific anomalies that more frequently turn up as an Oliver Sacks case history.

Sonia may seem happy-go-lucky at the start, but grief steels her. It makes her grow up very fast. She becomes a kind of heroine in the course of the film, which ultimately owes its stature to her presence.

So many movies these days are being linked, often quite tenuously, to current politics. Let this new film be no exception. I am happy to say that Ice Age: The Meltdown points up for toddlers the dangers of global warming.

It's reminiscent of David Lynch, who is a master at mixing the ghastly and the risible. Brick would be better with a bit more Lynch in its soul, but Johnson is his own man, and I look forward to what he comes up with next.

Chronicles the eerie and oddly inspiring story of Johnston's ongoing battles to survive - both as artist and human being.

Hartnett has been stuck in the young-adult heartthrob mode for some time now, but this comic thriller may launch him into meatier fare.

It's an expertly engineered popcorn movie - hold the butter substitute - but it also tries (and fails) to be a love story for the ages.

Beyond being a showplace for crash-and-burn effects, Poseidon seems to be stumping for togetherness.

This enjoyable Dreamworks animated comedy is well timed.

Streep and Tomlin are so attuned to each other that it's as if they had worked together all of their lives. In fact, it's their first time. Streep has become a wonderfully soulful comedian; Tomlin always was one.

It's all something of a stunt - "Speed" on a shoestring - but very well done.

It may be subtitled, and the faces may be unfamiliar, but District B13 is the best buddy action movie around.

This film is apolitical in the best sense - it bears witness to a time and a place.

At times the film resembles a promo for Shortz and the Times, and the celebrity puzzlers, who include filmmaker Ken Burns, Bill Clinton, and the Indigo Girls, have an unfortunate tendency to bloviate. Not so Jon Stewart, who seems to regard each Times puzzle as an opportunity to go mano a mano with Shortz.

A prime example of a dysfunctional-family comedy that also doubles as a road movie. Even the vehicle of transport is dysfunctional.

Right away in Miami Vice you know you're waist-deep in movieland.

At its best it shares with Stone's finest work a feeling for the imminence of death and salvation.

Despite much of the turmoil depicted, there is a sweetness to parts of this film that is reminiscent of the 1961 British movie "A Taste of Honey."

Best where it counts the most - in its recognition of how difficult it will be for Dan and Drey to turn their lives around.

Montenegro, the star of "Central Station," and her daughter make a remarkable pair. They hold your attention even when the emptily portentous story does not.

Very difficult to characterize and that's why I like it. The best I can do is to call it a sunny tragedy.

Whitaker is terrifying in a way that we recognize not from old movies but from life.

The passage of time has rarely been more forcefully conveyed in a movie, as we see clips of the interviewees not only from today but also at seven-year intervals from the past.

The movie confirms what most of us have known all along: Electability is all about staying on message.

Destined to become this year's love-it-or-hate-it movie. Is it OK to say I merely liked it a lot?

Eastwood has made an honorable movie about honor, but the naivete of the conception - which some will call purity - keeps "Flags" at arm's length from greatness.

Philip Noyce's anti-apartheid drama is tense and thoughtful, if somewhat marred by Hollywood-style thrills.

This computer-animated feature is consistently inventive, if a bit busy and overlong.

I have always felt that Almodóvar was at his best as an artist when he was at his most playful. Volver is about deadly serious matters of the heart, but it often has a screwball spirit. The darker things are, the funnier.

Craig makes you aware of something that the Bond series, in its pursuit of steamy sex and cartoon action, quickly lost sight of: 007 is a killer. That's what he's licensed to do.

The director is fortunate to have cast actors who fully embody their roles. Muehe, who once played Josef Mengele in Costa-Gavras's "Amen," has the ability to let you see far beneath his masklike countenance. Koch, dashing and intense, is entirely believable as a man of the theater; Gedeck exudes a sensuousness that this covert society cannot abide.

As strong as Blood Diamond is in its best moments, I wish it had been even harder-edged. DiCaprio is remarkable - his work is almost on par with his performance this year in "The Departed."

The screenplay is by Hanif Kureishi, who wrote "The Mother" for Michell and also scripted the classic "My Beautiful Laundrette." He has a feeling for outsiders.

In addition to being a beloved author and illustrator, Beatrix is also presented as an early feminist and environmentalist who took control of her literary empire and saved vast acres of luscious farmland from greedy developers, eventually bequeathing property to Britain's National Trust.

The cast is something of an indie movie hall of fame that includes Giovanni Ribisi, Mary Steenburgen, Brittany Murphy, and Toni Collette. Marcia Gay Harden is particularly fine as the murdered girl's mother.

Burton is extraordinary in one of his rare good movie roles and O'Toole is regally madcap and larger than life. No doubt his Oscar-nominated appearance in "Venus" has prompted this rerelease of Becket. They make a fascinating then-and-now combination.

Without Cooper's performance, Breach would have been a good, workmanlike thriller. His presence lifts it to a whole new level.

Color Me Kubrick is a far more modest movie, but in some ways is more successful than "The Hoax" in conveying how deeply people want to believe something is true against all evidence.

Nobody can play stupid better than Daniels – think "Dumb and Dumber" – and, as it turns out, few can play smarter. He's a sharp asset in a sharp movie.

In all, it's a fun exercise in nostalgia but a three-hour homage to grade Z movies is a long sit. Grunge overload sets in early.

Given the subject, the movie is too romanticized, and Christie's eyes remain too sharp here to convincingly convey someone whose memory is fast slipping away. Much of it is powerful anyway.

The best episodes have the emotional resonance of full-length features, and yet I didn't want them to be a moment longer than they are.

The ending is a set-up for yet another sequel: Can "28 Months Later" be very far away?

Kazi is a bundle of energy, and the film touches on an important and often-overlooked issue: The commercial pressure that is often brought to bear on rappers to be scurrilous and offensive. This project, which was produced by Bruce Willis and Queen Latifah, shows that there is another way.

The film drags a bit and Irglova's inexperience as an actor sometimes leaves her costars in the lurch. But it's a sweet little film just the same.

Gibson has done a capable job of directing The Man Without a Face, showing little in the way of a personal style, but taking advantage of the skills brought to the project by his collaborators. [27 Aug 1993]

Sweep aside the gross-outs and you've got the family values comedy of the year.

What makes the movie a superior specimen of traditional screen storytelling is largely the exquisite care director Armstrong has taken to make every shot as radiantly appealing as possible, bathing even the melancholy aspects of the plot in a glow that's as pleasing to the eye as it is warming to the heart. [23 Dec 1994]

Barring a middle-class revolt, it's extremely unlikely that, whatever its virtues, universal healthcare could ever take hold in America. Still, I'm glad Moore made his film.

As was also true of Pixar's last movie, "Cars," Ratatouille is better at pleasing the eye than the other senses.

The back-and-forth between the performers is tensely choreographed, and Buscemi does a good job opening up the action, which mostly takes place in a Manhattan loft.

Danes doesn't quite fit into the mindscape – she's too bland for a human star – but Cox comes of age quite convincingly, De Niro is a hoot, as is Ricky Gervais as a slimy tradesman. Pfeiffer has a field day.

What Alfred Hitchcock once said about thrillers also applies to Westerns: The stronger the bad guy, the better the film. By that measure, 3:10 to Yuma is excellent.

I wish this movie wasn't so purposefully elegiac and attenuated – at times it's like a middling Terrence Malick fantasia – but it's well worth sitting through.

It's awfully difficult at this point in film history to come up with a car chase that's startlingly new, but Gray pulls it off. It's the best of its kind since "The French Connection."

The filmmaking style is annoyingly slick, but the testimonies of these children are excruciatingly moving.

It may sound like faint praise to say that Enchanted is the movie of the year for smart and spirited 11-year-old girls. But a movie that genuinely respects that audience is not to be belittled.

Director Andrew Wagner, adapting a novel by Brian Morton, is sometimes understated to a fault, but his work with the actors, who also include Lili Taylor as Leonard's daughter, is impeccable.

At its best, the movie makes you feel like a kindred spirit.

While this may seem like an apologia for randy older men, it doesn't come off that way, and Cruz gives her best performance to date.

Vanessa Redgrave, as the adult Briony, appears at the very end in a monologue that rounds out the film with heartbreaking force.

Nanking, directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, does justice to this tragedy even though it makes the mistake of mixing the testimony of actual participants with staged readings from actors subbing for real people.

A considerable achievement even if, on balance, it's more of a Tim Burton phantasmagoria than a Sondheim fantasia.

Based on the 1938 novel by Winifred Watson, it's a deluxe romance that most of the time plays like farce.

Too much of this film is attenuated and vague, but it has moments of deep melancholy.

Shine A Light is essentially just an expertly made concert film. But what a concert! (And what a camera team.)

It radiates intelligence. Of how many historical epics can that be said these days?